Transmission control protocol (TCP) connections may be offloaded to a dedicated TCP offload engine (TOE) to increase performance and to reduce host CPU utilization. Some TCP state variables (e.g., a TCP sequence number (TCP_SEQ), a TCP acknowledgement number (TCP_ACK), etc.) are managed entirely by the dedicated TOE after the TCP connection is offloaded. However, using the TOE increases the risk of an unreliable TCP connection. For example, in the event of a TOE hardware failure, the values of the TCP variables are lost. The host CPU must then terminate the TCP connection.
Further limitations and disadvantages of conventional and traditional approaches will become apparent to one of ordinary skill in the art through comparison of such systems with aspects of the present invention as set forth in the remainder of the present application with reference to the drawings.